1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to methods and systems for testing the compliance of PCIE expansion systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Unless otherwise indicated herein, the approaches described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Nowadays, the Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (“PCIE”) standard has replaced the Accelerated Graphics Port (“AGP”) standard as the most common interface for graphics cards on computer systems. Unlike the previous generation of interface standards, the PCIE interface uses a plurality of point-to-point full duplex serial links, also called lanes, which allow bidirectional communication at high bandwidth data transfer. Having superior capabilities, the PCIE interface can thus be advantageously used in current computer systems for coupling a central processing unit (“CPU”) to multiple processing units, such as graphics processing units (“GPUs”), thereby allowing increased performance of the computer systems.
In practical implementations, a PCIE expansion system is usually coupled between a motherboard of the computer system and the multiple PCIE slots to which external devices can be coupled. During operation, data signals are transmitted through data lanes on the PCIE expansion system to be exchanged between the CPU and the external devices. However, to ensure that the PCIE expansion system operates properly, compliance tests are needed to verify that signals transmitted through the PCIE expansion system comply with the PCIE requirements. Unfortunately, current testing methods fail to provide suitable solutions to test the numerous data signals that are exchanged through the PCIE expansion system.
What is needed in the art is thus a method and system for testing the compliance of PCIE expansion systems in a cost-effective manner to verify that data signals transmitted through multiple data lanes in the expansion system comply with the PCIE requirements.